looking to start reloading. only .223

[frenchyguy]

hello. i am looking to buy the equipment to start reloading. what is the best set up for a new person.(.223 rem ONLY) i have used the rock chucker twice, to load 9mm, i have nothing. and i would prefer to go progressive, rather than single stage. as i will just end up getting one the following year i assume

 

[carbonrod]

dillon 550b.

 

[dudley2112]

what about a lee turret press, faster then a single stage but not as expensive as a 550

 

[BCRider]

I bought a Dillon 550b used along with a few bits and pieces. I was also given a couple of Lee 3 position turret presses in exchange for some work.

One of the Lee's was set up for progressive loading of .45ACP with a case feeder and the auto primer. Being older it had some issues so after a comedy of errors and ruined ammo in the first 30 to 40 rounds I removed the case feeder and also removed the shaft that indexed the table around. Once set up as a hand indexed loader with hand placed cases and bullets things went far, far more smoothly. And frankly having reloaded some 4000 rounds of various handgun and rifle calibers I don't want to go back to any form of inexpensive auto-indexing. Too many options for something to go wrong in the cycle. I understand that the fancier machines are much better on this point but I haven't used them so I can't comment on them.

The Dillon 550 set up and ran flawlessly right off the bat. The primer handling in particular is much better than the Lee which is prone to the occasional jam in the flat hopper to chute connection. Another nice feature of the Dillon over the Lee is that you can more easily insert or remove a casing from the cycle at any point by just lifting out the button that holds the case into the mouth of the plate. This has come in very handy for setting up or doing some special non progressive short runs of hand measured powders for small test batches instead of cleaning out the powder dispenser. Or just to make things easier during caliber switchovers or die setups for testing. The Lee system isn't as flexible on this count as it requires the whisker springs to be removed with a small screwdriver to allow the same operation.

So if you don't mind the extra expense for the Dillon you won't regret the cost. It really is a nicely designed and made system that will load more calibers with less conversion work. But if you want to keep it cheap for now then the less fancy Lee progressives can work but may need a little more fussing around to work for you. I know this is limited to just two machines but hopefully what I wrote will give you a better idea of what features I found to be more helpful and which were a pain or less desireable so you can look at the different machines and make up your own mind.

Oh, if you think you'll be loading longer rifle cases in the future be sure to get a machine that has a long enough stroke. Even then some extra long rounds won't be loadable in any but the higher end machines or in rifle specific single station machines. The 223 is pretty short so it's loadable in pretty much any machine that'll do handgun rounds.